Getting us from Point A to B

They’ve been meeting just about every week for about four months now, in a conference room at the end of the road of Collin County’s government campus in McKinney. This handful of men, volunteers all, have been working with county engineering staff, learning about, discussing and wrestling with the complexities of our growing region’s biggest irritation:

Getting from point A to B through traffic jams.

We all deal with our clogged transportation network, which is only getting worse as our county continues to add residents and businesses at a rapid pace. But this creative and forward-thinking group is helping develop a plan with its associated long-term costs of getting ahead of the traffic congestion.

During the January 5, 2017 meeting of the county planning board, Clarence Daugherty, the director of county engineering, announced Commissioners Court plans to pursue a transportation bond program to address our looming infrastructure crisis. At the request of the Commissioners Court, a transportation bond subcommittee of the planning board was formed. This new subcommittee met for the first time on January 12th, and has continued to meet since. Traffic and density data was analyzed, specific road needs were defined, and costs estimated. The need to educate the public has also been a recurring discussion point: any solutions to impending gridlock (certain but still in the future) would be long-term (as in relief would not be rapid nor immediate) and costly, yet it is critical to begin such projects now.

Based on the discussions within the subcommittee, presentations were created, reviewed by county engineering staff and county commissioners, and finally unveiled to city and town executives on March 1st at a County Transportation Summit. Based on feedback from those meetings, options for a transportation bond election in November 2017 are currently being crafted for presentation to the full planning board, then submitted for approval by the Commissioners Court. Part of these preparations will be public presentations prior to the election.

The transportation bond subcommittee members are:

Buddy Dean

Bill Moore

Shep Stahel

Mark Reid

Don Thoes

Gerald Vokolek

Other members of the planning board are:

Bill Cox

Rusty Glover

Joe Helmberger

George Marshall

Sean Merrell

Bill Mills

John Muns

Steve Terrell

Steve Wright

The transportation bond subcommittee will be making a presentation to the Commissioners Court on Monday, June 5th, beginning at 6 p.m. The full planning board will meet next on Thursday, June 1st, at 7 p.m. in the Commissioners Courtroom, 4th floor, 2300 Bloomdale Road, McKinney.